Culture’s Skin
摘要
Elle à Donné (2007) is an installation of 15 photographs catalysed by a trip to the outer reaches of semi-arid, rural NSW’s farmland. I had gone there to learn about the land, the impacts of coloniser farming, the loss of Indigenous knowledge, and contemporary social challenges in environmental management. In the dry red sands of remote Australia, I began to read the movement of ancient rivers and learned to understand the finely attuned skills of Indigenous trackers—skills once relied upon and simultaneously dismissed by settlers. I learnt how the introduction of hard-hooved livestock had devastated delicate ecologies (soil, vegetation, water systems) and how erosion and massive dust storms carried precious topsoil to faraway oceans (Figs. 8.1, 8.2, 8.3, 8.4 and 8.5).